


you're in my blood, you're my holy wine

by lissidoll



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Angst and Feels, Established Relationship, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-08-24 15:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16643270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lissidoll/pseuds/lissidoll
Summary: Mischa's spent so many years expecting his relationship with Sascha to get found out, he's never let himself get too comfortable. When the secret's out it might be too late to salvage what's left.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Between being homesick while travelling and knocked on my ass by a respiratory infection the last couple of weeks, I was reading mesohorany's Sascha/Mischa fic and the line about their parents never finding out made me wonder, is there any situation where they could be in a relationship and survive their parents finding out? How would that play out?
> 
> And so, this. 
> 
> This is pretty much finished; I'm just polishing off the end and editing so the second and third parts will go up over the next couple of days and I'll be back at work on 'this sinking boat'. As always, fiction =/= reality; I don't own the sandbox, I'm just building castles in it. Obviously warnings for incest and general angst (though I don't believe in unhappy endings). Title and quote from Joni Mitchell's 'A Case of You' which I listened to on repeat for half of this.

* * *

_I remember that time that you told me, you said_  
_"Love is touching souls"_  
_Surely you touched mine 'cause_  
_Part of you pours out of me_  
_In these lines from time to time_

* * *

 

 

_you’re in my blood, you’re my holy wine_

 

The text from their dad isn’t anything unusual, single sentence in Russian: _come and meet us at the hotel when you’re done._

Mischa spots it halfway through the ridiculous apple-bobbing challenge ATP Uncovered have them doing for the Halloween episode, face still dripping from his turn over the giant bowl of water and apples. It’s Sascha’s now, laughing too hard to keep his jaw clenched so the apples tumble everywhere instead of into the waiting box and Mischa’s mostly focused on keeping his smile amused rather than covetous as he watches his brother’s mouth, reddened lips stretched wide and the wet, soft flash of tongue as he tries to roll the apple between his teeth, the rasped little gasps for air he makes whenever he surfaces from the water.

It should be dumb and silly — that’s what the camera crew want, good entertainment, and Mischa’s sure he looked like a struggling goldfish during his turn — but Sascha’s bent over at the waist in a perfect arc and panting, wriggles of darkened gold framing his face where his hair’s getting wet. It’s so close to the sounds he makes, the look he wears, behind closed doors that Mischa flashes back to their shower last night, Sascha’s skin sweat-shined and flushed all over as he leaned back against the tiles, lips bitten red around his moans as Mischa slid his mouth down the salt-slick heat of his brother’s length.

His body stirs disobediently at the memory, and he grits his teeth against a curse, covers it by thumbing out a quick _sure, see you soon_ to his dad’s message and tucking his phone back into his shorts. The second cameraman is focused on him, framing reaction shots to cut together of Mischa watching — watching his brother doing something dumb, expecting him to be laughing himself stupid like any brother would.

Swallowing hard, Mischa presses his thighs together and with the ease of long practice keeps his smile wedged in place.

‘Come on Sash,’ he calls, teasing, ‘I thought a top five player would be better with fruit shaped like tennis balls. Think of it as hitting a forehand with your face.’

Without lifting his head from the water Sascha makes a gesture that has Mischa groaning, shooting an apologetic look at the nearest cameraman. Beside him, the long-suffering ATP press officer lets out an audible sigh.

‘It’s okay. They’ll edit it out.’

‘I keep trying to teach him manners,’ Mischa says apologetically, ‘but his brain isn’t big enough to hold them as well as all the tennis.’

‘I heard that.’ Sascha yells around a mouthful of apple, and makes an undignified choking sound when he inhales water, almost dunking his entire head as he loses his balance. Mischa doesn’t realise he’s leaned forward, fists clenched in sudden alarm, until Sascha catches the edge of the barrel to steady himself, yanks upright with a cough and a stream of truly filthy Russian, shaking his head so water sprays from the rumpled ruin of his hair. ‘Fuck,’ he splutters, ‘how much time have I got left?’ and he’s ducking for another apple without waiting on the answer, teeth clenched white and sharp around the stem.

‘Tell me you got that,’ the press officer murmurs to the man filming Mischa and he gives her a thumbs up without jolting the camera. Adrenaline still simmering hot in every muscle, nails cutting into his palms, Mischa tries to keep his voice level.

‘Got what?’

‘The look on your face.’ The press officer glances at him, something soft around the edges of her smile as she realises he doesn’t understand and she tilts her immaculate blond head toward the laughing, dripping Sascha. ‘He’s trying to beat you but you were ready to jump right in and rescue him. We’ve done this with most of the doubles teams but so far everyone’s been more likely to dunk each other than dive in to save the day. It’s sweet, the viewers’ll love it.’

Mischa’s fists are still clenched in panic but it’s a different kind of panic, now. Both of them are so practiced at dissembling these days that it’s been months – maybe longer – since they were last nearly caught out. He’d almost forgotten to stop himself, forgotten the trick of holding every inch of himself carefully still and measured so he didn’t spend every unconscious second swaying into Sascha’s orbit.

Their lives aren’t as simple as editing out a careless moment. They can’t forget that.

He huffs a dismissive laugh, ducking his head. ‘You know,’ he tells the press officer, letting himself smile at Sascha – not too wide, tempered down to something acceptable. ‘Little brother and all that. I’d never hear the end of it from our parents if I let anything happen to him. It’s not worth the shouting.’

‘Time’s up,’ the producer’s telling Sascha, grinning when he tries to toss a wayward apple at the basket anyway; he misses, the fruit bouncing off the rim and rolling over to knock into Mischa’s foot. ‘Hey, no cheating. Afraid your brother beat you.’

Ignoring the towel offered by one of the production assistants Sascha wipes a hand over his face in a scatter of bright water, gleaming brilliant all over under the fluorescent lights of the player’s lounge. His eyes when he looks across at Mischa are almost the same colour, lit pale with the lights and amusement beneath the tangle of his wet hair; Mischa’s stomach clenches at the sight, heat and affection washing over him at the knowing edge to Sascha’s smile.

‘I was distracted,’ Sascha drawls. ‘He was putting me off, yelling like that. We’ll have to have a rematch later.’

Mischa bends over to pick up the wayward apple, tossing it from hand to hand as he walks over to the repurposed coffee bar where they’ve set up the apple bobbing. Sascha’s gaze is on him every step, intent over the innocence of his smile and it’s that which makes Mischa reckless, despite his best intentions. When he reaches down to rinse the apple off in the bowl, cool water that Sascha had his face, his mouth, his _tongue_ in just seconds ago running between his fingers, his brother’s lashes flicker down in a blink, composure cracking barely enough that only someone who knows Sascha inside and out would notice.

‘Might need this if you’re planning on taking me on again,’ Mischa says, smile lazy with triumph as he offers Sascha the dripping apple. When Sascha takes it their fingertips brush, wet and cool, and goosebumps sweep down Mischa’s arm.

Sascha’s immediate smile mirrors his, curled wicked around the corners of his mouth exactly where Mischa likes to kiss. ‘Don’t think you can bribe me into going easy on you,’ he says and bites into the apple, red against the sweet pink flush of lips, juice running down his chin. The heat that floods low in Mischa’s stomach is too much; he has to look away, rolling his eyes to cover that he’d been staring.

‘God,’ he says, hoping he doesn’t sound noticeably hoarse, ‘am I going to have to teach you proper eating manners too?’

Sascha licks his lips with a wet, smacking sound. ‘You’re welcome to _try_.’

‘Seriously,’ the press officer says from behind them and Mischa barely controls his flinch; he’d forgotten they had an audience, fuck. ‘You two are so sweet. We need to get you on camera more often.’

Glancing back at his brother Mischa meets him smirk for smirk, watching Sascha’s tongue chase drops of apple juice around his lower lip like the fucking tease he is.

‘Oh I don’t know,’ he says and it scrapes out with a warning this time, heat pooling low until he has to brace himself against the table. Flirting in front of ATP cameras is pushing their luck to breaking point. ‘Not sure I could handle it. Getting him to behave is a full time job.’

 

*

 

‘I can’t believe you,’ Sascha says, amused, when they finally escape to the locker room with their reputations (barely) intact. ‘Getting _me_ to behave? You’re the one who gave me the fucking apple, what was I supposed to do?’

‘Maybe not eat it _like you were giving it a blowjob_ , for fuck’s sake Sash.’ Mischa keeps his voice low, glancing around. It’s almost the end of the week in Basel and there’s hardly anyone left but the locker room here is pretty tiny, not many convenient corners in which to hide.

It’s getting late though and tonight there’s only Franko on the bench in the corner, in street clothes tying his shoes to leave; Mischa busies himself opening his locker to give them time, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Sascha when his brother leans insouciantly against the wall beside him. Only when Franko’s left, wishing them a polite _good night_ on the way out, does Mischa let his forehead fall against the door of his locker with a breathed Russian curse.

Sascha’s hand comes to rest at the small of his back, easy, as if it’s perfectly natural for him to be tucking a warm thumb beneath the waistband of his brother’s shorts. Despite himself Mischa arcs his hips into the weight of it, shivering with the way all his fluttering nerves calm beneath Sascha’s fingertips.

‘Mischa,’ Sascha says, low in his throat, ‘what’s wrong?’

_I’m fucking my little brother_. ‘Nothing,’ Mischa says without lifting his head, eyes closed. Every time he looks at Sascha, all his common sense has a tendency to slip away; it’s hard enough to think straight with them touching, his muscles aching with the need to press back into Sascha’s broad palm. ‘I mean, us. How close I came to throwing myself at you back there because I was worried you were about to drown in ten inches of water with half the ATP press office watching. Fuck. We’re getting sloppy.’

‘We are not.’ Sascha’s hand moves, pushes up beneath Mischa’s t-shirt as if he isn’t disproving his own words, tennis-hard fingertips trailing up the dip of his brother’s spine in a wave of gooseflesh, dragging an inadvertent roll of sound between Mischa’s gritted teeth.

It’s been three years since he first let Sascha pin him up against the wall of their newly shared Monte Carlo flat and kiss him, hard and breathless with fear mixed with want, and Mischa’s body still goes from zero to a hundred in the space of one turned-on gasp whenever his brother touches him. They’re fucked up and so fucking in tune with each other and Mischa knows he’s gone, utterly; common sense has left the building. Sometimes he wonders if his body’s too addicted to this for him to survive a withdrawal.

‘Sash,’ he says all the same, ‘we’re in the shared locker room with your hand up my shirt. This is the definition of getting sloppy.’

Sascha makes a discontented sound but lets his hand drop. ‘It’s not like we’re doing anything obvious. I am allowed to touch you.’

As if to prove his point he steps in daringly close, so close Mischa’s nerves light up all down his left side like electricity snapped between them when Sascha leans past him ( _on_ him) to fish out his phone and wallet from the locker. He’d tossed them into Mischa’s before the filming because he’d forgotten his own locker key again; Mischa suspects suddenly that it wasn’t by accident when Sascha allows the long, lean line of his body to press hard against Mischa’s, rolling his hips enough to make his point. For a brief moment it’s all breathless heat and the spark of arousal catching fire everywhere they touch, Mischa clenching his hands to fists to keep himself from reaching down to adjust himself before Sascha steps back with a smirk.

‘See,’ he says, bright as sunshine, ‘No big deal. Just getting my stuff.’

‘I’ll let you explain that to Roger if he walks in while you’re grinding into my thigh,’ Mischa rasps. He feels wrecked from that simple press of bodies, pulled apart and nowhere to hide under Sascha’s gaze. ‘Fuck. Why do I have to be the responsible one when you get to be such a tease?’

‘Because you love me.’ Sascha flashes him a broad smile, all teeth as he switches from German to Russian. ‘And because I’ll let you fuck me tonight to make up for it.’

‘For _fuck’s sake_ Sascha,’ Mischa hisses, glancing over his shoulder. ‘If someone heard you-’

‘There’s no one here and if anyone did walk in, the odds on them speaking Russian are comparatively low. You have to chill out before you get a stress ulcer, Mischa.’ Sascha raises his eyebrows, pushing his still-damp hair off his face with the hand not holding his phone, all long limbs and insolence in the curl of his tongue over his upper lip. ‘Unless you don’t want to fuck me? I can find someone else if you do not think you’re up to it, if I am too much trouble for you; I get offers every day now you know, I’m hot stuff.’

Despite the lazy confidence in his slouch against the wall, the taunting gleam of his smile, Mischa catches the tremble that threads the undercurrent of his brother’s voice. Sascha’s confidence these days is the veneer of youthful brashness propped up on increasingly-shaky adult doubt; he’s past the age when _next big thing_ is far enough away to seem assured and with every loss, every collapse in a fifth set, the foundations crumble a little more. It doesn’t matter how often they all tell him to be patient, that it’ll come in time, it still worries at him constantly.

Mischa’s the only one that knows. He knows that his brother wakes in the middle of the night panicking that he’s failing by inches, that he’ll never live up to what everyone expects of him because it’s Mischa he curls into silent and desperate in the small hours, trembling in his brother’s arms until Mischa soothes him back to sleep with kisses and soft-whispered reassurance. Promising wins to come, promising things he believes completely – he knows how good Sascha is, how inevitable his success is going to be and he presses the truth of it from his lips into Sascha’s sweat-slick skin, writing out his faith with teeth and tongue.

But it’s Sascha who needs to hit the tennis balls and now, right now, it’d be as easy for Sascha to break as for him to win Wimbledon.

And this time, it’s Mischa who put that tremble there. He tries to keep some perspective on this thing they’ve built between them, pull back when he can because he never wants Sascha to feel like he can’t take the out if he needs it but at the same time Mischa can’t bear to see his brother upset. Hating himself a little for letting his own mistake turn into another reason for Sascha to doubt – it was Mischa who almost forgot to control himself for the cameras, would’ve been his fault if they’d been caught – he’s stepping forward immediately, crowding into Sascha’s personal space with their hips flush and his hand finding Sascha’s between their chests, fingers interlinked. He lets himself look up finally, meeting Sascha’s eyes.

Up close there’s uncertainty in the petulant downcurve to Sascha’s smile, hesitance in the way he starts to form words and lets them slide away, tension in a tight web of lines around his eyes. Mischa leans in, doesn’t allow himself to double-check the room before he stretches up to kiss the anxiety away from his brother’s mouth, lush and wet and sure.

‘You are never too much trouble for me,’ he says into the kiss without leaning back, feeling Sascha’s warm intake of breath from his own mouth. His brother tastes like apples and sweetness, like the slow, hot burn of want. ‘In it together, remember? You fall, I fall. You win-’

‘We win,’ Sascha breathes into the slide of their mouths together. It’s his own words from three years ago in the Monte Carlo apartment, with Mischa staring at him terrified by his own longing; from every time Mischa was injured with the rankings falling away; from Sascha winning Rome and the glory that was the sun-kissed week in Eastbourne this year for Mischa. No matter which of them is winning or losing, faltering on a tennis court or standing in the winner’s spotlight, they share it equally. Good with the bad, Zverev brothers against the world.

Mischa smiles against his brother’s mouth, feels the answering curve of Sascha’s lips on his.

‘That said,’ he says ruefully, finally leaning back, ‘I will try to chill. Getting an ulcer would properly fuck up our doubles chances.’

Sascha squeezes his hand once more before he steps back. The after-impression of his warmth still lingers over Mischa’s skin like phantom hands, Sascha written into the fabric of him even from a safe distance.

‘Oh I don’t know,’ Sascha says with wickedness crinkling his smile, ‘I like knowing that you’ll dive in to rescue me if the ATP try to take me out. It’s like having my own personal Superman.’

‘Does that make you my Lois Lane?’

Attention already diverting to his phone, Sascha wrinkles his nose. ‘No thanks. Getting kidnapped by supervillains all the time would fuck up my workouts and Jez would make that face, you know, the one where he’s only waiting for you to finish the excuse before he makes you do ten extra crunches for every second you wasted.’ He frowns at his phone screen, the sweet little wrinkle that Mischa loves forming between his eyebrows. ‘Dad says they’ll meet us at the hotel when we’re done?’

Mischa pauses with his hoodie halfway out his locker, glancing over at his brother. ‘He messaged you? That’s weird, he sent the same thing to me. They knew we were doing this Uncovered thing together, right?’

‘Maybe they figured we’d definitely see it if he tried both of us. They must have dinner plans or something and they don’t want us to be late.’ Sascha hitches one broad shoulder in dismissal, sliding his phone into the pocket of his jeans – pushing them down enough to show one precise-ruled line of hipbone in the process. When he catches Mischa’s instant attention he grins, runs a slow thumb along the sun-kissed curve of it, pausing at his own waistband.

‘Nevermind,’ he says, soft, and it takes Mischa a long, distracted second to realise he means their parents co-opting their evening. ‘Guess I’ll have to wait a few hours to challenge you to a rematch.’

Mischa drags his gaze away from the taunting flash of his brother’s skin, focuses on shouldering his locker shut to keep from reaching out.

‘Oh?’ he says, swallowing against the rasp that wants to edge his voice. ‘How are you going to do that? You ate all our apples.’

Sascha’s grin is sly and full of promise, the wet tip of tongue running along his upper lip. ‘Come on Mischa. You know I don’t need apples to prove to you how good I am with my mouth.’

Mischa groans. ‘ _Tease,’_ he repeats in despair and lets Sascha wrap an arm around his shoulders as they walk out, his brother’s laugh rumbling low in his chest and felt everywhere they touch. Almost innocent, except for Sascha’s fingertips tracing idle circles down Mischa’s collarbone, ticklish-teasing, Mischa responding with a hand at the dip of his brother’s back with fingers sliding low, warm, pressing promisingly beneath the waistband of his jeans.

It’s distracting enough that he doesn’t stop to wonder what their dad wants. Their parents text them all the time, to track practices and meeting places, plan dinner choices and Lovik-sitting; it’s not unusual. It’s probably nothing.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, it wasn't nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am Annoyed about the way fans treated Sascha at the World Tour Finals today and I would like to be posting something fluffier than this when he was so obviously upset, but this is what I got. I enthusiastically endorse everyone writing masses of Marcelo/Sascha fluff to offset the negativity.

* * *

 

As it turns out, it isn’t nothing.

‘Where did you get those?’ Mischa asks, unable to shift his horrified stare from the desk in their parent’s hotel room. From what’s on the desk. His voice sounds strange even to him, thin as if it’s been compressed by the enormous constricting panic pouring into his chest.

They’d been getting sloppy sure but he’d never imagined – _fuck, fuck_ , _we’re so fucked_ . _Think of an excuse._

He comes up terribly, achingly blank, tries weakly: _‘_ Is this a joke?’

‘Mischa?’ That’s Sascha, coming up behind him into the room after pausing to say hi to Novak outside, and for a blinding instant of despair it’s everything Mischa can do not to turn and push his little brother back to the hallway, back to the elevator where they’d been laughing only seconds ago, Mischa’s hand tucked comfortably into the back pocket of Sascha’s jeans. Back to a moment before he knew that they were totally and utterly fucked.

Holding himself still with every scrap of willpower he possesses, Mischa doesn’t move. He knows that running now would be as a good as a confession; he knows it was too late to stop this the moment they walked in the door. Knows he’s helpless to do anything other than watch his own reaction play out for Sascha, too.

It still hurts to hear Sascha hiss in a sharp intake of breath when he sees the photographs on the desk, printed fuzzy and enlarged on ordinary printer paper, colours washed out and damning just the same.

‘They were in an envelope pushed under our door. No note,’ their dad says. He’s sitting on the end of the bed, stocky frame folded inward tightly in the way he has when he’s holding onto anger. Irina in contrast is leaning against the wall across the room with Lovik in her arms, staring silently at the floor – as if she’s putting as much space between herself and the hideous photographs as possible.

Mischa can hardly blame her; he’d like nothing more than to retreat himself. When their dad clears his throat, with the hyperfocus of panic Mischa sees Irina rock forward as if to go to him, catch herself mid-step. Instead she drops her head to hide her face in Lovik’s dark fur.

‘You mother and I,’ Alexander senior says in soft, bleached-thin-by-fury Russian, ‘would like you to explain what is going on in these photographs?’

 _We’re only kissing._ It’s Mischa’s first impulse thought on forcing himself to look again at the terrible pictures. Except he’s right, they aren’t objectively terrible at all; if it was any other couple, any ordinary couple, they’d be nothing more than a quiet moment of affection caught on camera.

In the first one – the less terrible one – Sascha’s smiling the sparkling little grin he wears when he’s looking at something he really loves, leaned back against a bank of lockers with his eyes lit shockingly blue and face framed by Mischa’s hands cupping his jaw. Mischa’s got his back to whoever took the picture and he’d be tempted to deny that it’s him, if that wouldn’t throw Sascha firmly under the bus of explaining why he’s kissing random men in the locker room. And if the second photo hadn’t made that a futile argument anyway, damned them both in perfect clarity.

The second picture, half-tucked beneath the first, shows that they’d turned slightly as Sascha pushed off the lockers, into Mischa’s arm around his waist. Mischa thinks he remembers the exact moment or maybe it’s only muscle memory filling in the gaps, of the thin skin and heat of Sascha’s hipbone hard beneath his palm, the slightly-scratchy fabric of the grey shirt he’d worn in Shanghai that left him oversensitive and shivering whenever Mischa touched his chest. He’d made a soft sound just before the photo was taken, Mischa thinks, pure happiness hummed out as he leaned in and the instant after is what’s caught indelibly on the paper, Sascha’s eyes closed and the side of Mischa’s face in profile, making it clear as day that’s he’s smiling into the kiss.

The very obvious more-than-friendly kiss, mouths together with their bodies flush shoulder to thigh. Mischa feels numb all over, can’t tear his gaze from the sweet curve of his own smile pressed to Sascha’s painted clear in washed out ink.

There’s been pictures of him looking at Sascha before of course, hugging Sascha, touching Sascha platonically; photographers have been all over them since before Sascha even turned pro. But he’s never seen himself from the outside in an unguarded moment with his brother. Not since this thing between them started, not since he let himself admit that this was something he wanted.

Now, seeing himself right there in technicolour for the first time – underneath the all-consuming panic something quiet and bittersweet clenches in his chest, similar to the feeling he gets when Sascha rolls over into him all lazy warm limbs and affection on the infrequent mornings they get to wake up in the same bed. It’s boundless, so intense it almost hurts when he catches his breath on it. An almost-indescribable longing to keep this tangible, perfect thing he’s been gifted as close as he can hold it, always, mixed with fear that it was never his to keep in the first place.

Because the fact that the photos are beautiful on that level doesn’t stop them being terrible on another. On the one level, nothing more than a stolen moment in the quiet, both of them fully clothed, chaste. Obviously adoring each other. But under his parents’ expectant stares, the crushing weight of their disappointment, Mischa wants to crumple the paper between his desperate hands, set fire to the room and the hotel and the entire world if it means no one has to look at those pictures of sin and lines crossed and terrible, unforgivable betrayal of trust ever again.

He can’t make himself move. He can’t think of a single thing to say.

It’s Sascha, honest, heart-on-his-sleeve, can’t-lie-for-shit-to-a-roomful-of-press-for-his-reputation Sascha who saves them. Pushing past Mischa still rooted to the floor, Sascha stalks over to the desk with a low whistle and picks up the top photograph, bringing it up as if for a closer look. His hand doesn’t shake but Mischa hopes he’s the only one with the right angle to see his brother’s white-knuckled grip crumpling the paper.

‘Fuck,’ Sascha says and it rolls off his tongue lightly, as if he’s commenting on nothing more than a bad shot in practice. ‘They’re such idiots, I can’t believe they took photos.’

‘Sascha.’ That’s their father using his dangerously cool tone; Mischa wants to reach out on impulse to brush his fingertips across Sascha’s arm, warn his brother to be careful. Thankfully his panic-frozen muscles prevent him doing something so stupidly obvious before Alexander finishes, ‘What do you mean _they_?’

‘It was a joke.’ Sascha glances over his shoulder at Mischa, frown furrowed in a way that suggests he’s struggling to keep his neutral expression from sliding into panic. ‘Nick and Marcelo were messing about in the locker room, calling us an old married couple and we were getting them back. Look, Mischa.’

He offers the photo. The last thing Mischa wants to do right now is touch it but Sascha’s thrown them a lifeline and he’s hanging on by his fingertips, obvious strain in the tight press of his lips, eyes wide with a silent plea that moves Mischa when nothing else could. Saving Sascha from drowning but saving himself, too. On legs that feel like rubber he closes the distance to take the paper.

‘I remember,’ he says, his voice still tangled up with terror and the hollow certainty that one or both of their parents is going to call bullshit any second. ‘In Shanghai, I-’ Almost finishes with _I recognise the lockers_ before he catches himself; if this was a one-off joke, rather than only one of countless kisses, of course he wouldn’t need visual cues to remind him. Kissing his brother would – should – be a memorable event. ‘They were teasing you about Olya being a third wheel, right?’

‘Right.’ When Sascha takes the paper back, it’s almost certainly an excuse to let their fingers brush, the only contact that’s safe right now. Mischa feels it like an electric jolt, has to clench his empty fingers convulsively on nothing as Sascha tosses the photo back onto the desk with a derisive sound.

‘It was only a joke, for a second. We were messing around to wind them up because they were being dicks about us only playing doubles with each other and not them; Mischa was trying to shut them up for me, that’s all. It wasn’t a big deal.’

And _oh_ that’s too far, Mischa resisting a wince even as their father chokes out a disbelieving scoff. In front of him Sascha’s broad shoulders go tight, so tight Mischa’s afraid he’ll break.

‘Not a big deal!’ Alexander cuts himself off at a hissed warning from Irina when his voice rises, swallows back the sound as he glares at his sons. ‘You don’t think these photos being pushed under our door is a big deal? You don’t think what might happen if oh, a _journalist_ found these photos would be a big deal? By all means, explain to me how photographs showing _two_ _brothers_ _kissing on the mouth_ could be anything other than a big fucking mess of a deal!’

‘It’s one photo and we didn’t know they took it.’

The strain is clear in Sascha’s tone now, whiting-out with panic until he sounds razored flat, lined in defeat the same way his voice dips an octave in post-loss press. It’s too much for Mischa who steps closer as if to look at the photos over his brother’s shoulder as cover, pressing the heel of his hand hard to the small of Sascha’s back, grounding. Mutely, desperately grateful for Sascha being fast enough to come up with the lie.

‘We messed up letting someone take a photo, yeah,’ he says to their parents but to Sascha too, meaning something different. ‘But we were only messing around, like Sash said. We’ll make sure they delete the originals. It was probably Nick getting someone to prank you Sash, because he’s bored that he’s stuck at home. Didn’t you say he was dragging you on Instagram yesterday?’ When his brother doesn’t reply he digs his fingertips in harder, hopes he doesn’t find bruises there later. ‘ _Sash_?’

‘Yeah,’ Sascha says hoarsely. He reaches out to slide the photos aside, looking at the envelope they’re resting on. It’s plain brown and nondescript apart from the slanted black felt tip spelling out the room number in one corner. ‘Yeah it was probably Nick messing with me. I’ll sort it.’

For the first time since they walked in, from across the room Irina looks up at them. Her eyes are red and Mischa feels Sascha rock back against his bracing hand, feels the shudder that racks his brother echoed in himself at the obvious misery in her face. Their dad’s furious but they made their mother cry.

Mischa realises with detached, fatalistic certainty, that as soon as he gets somewhere private he’s either going to break something or throw up. Maybe both.

‘Why would Nick – why would anyone – send us these?’ Irina’s voice is thick with misery but level, her iron grip on herself better than her husband’s. Lovik licks her chin with a whine, wriggles in her arms to try to get to Sascha but she doesn’t put the dog down. ‘You must know what we thought when we opened it – what it looks like-’

Waiting a beat too long for Sascha to step in with another last-minute miracle, Mischa realises his brother’s trembling against his palm, silent, and says hastily, ‘That’s easy – this is still down as being Sash’s room isn’t it? You didn’t tell the hotel that you’d switched?' Against his open hand he feels Sascha lean back slightly, approval in the way the tension of his shoulders ratchets down a notch.

Their first night in Basel, the road noise from outside the hotel kept Sascha (and Mischa, curled into the long, restless lines of his brother with a mumble of protest for every wriggle) awake until 3am; seeing Sascha yawning at breakfast the next morning, Irina offered to switch rooms. Anyone asking for Sascha’s room number, if the hotel was inclined to give it – to say, another tennis player – would get the room their parents were now in.

Possibly that simple switch with Sascha’s yawning agreement at the start of the week is why they’re in this fucking mess at all.

Mischa silently curses in three languages for bad luck, and for their own stupidity in kissing in the middle of the locker room. Sloppy. He’d known it. He just hadn’t known it was already too late and they’d already been sucker-punched while he laughed at Sascha flirting with him around an indecent mouthful of apple.

Bad luck or not, room mix-ups are at least a plausible enough explanation that some of the tension lines ease from Irina’s face.

‘Oh,’ she says, glancing at her husband. ‘That would make sense…?’

‘Maybe.’ Alexander is staring at them both, the glacial cool of his eyes the same as Sascha’s when he’s angry, as the clear blue that looks back at Mischa from the mirror. It’s never made him want to flinch this badly before, the reminder that they’re all family; it takes all the strength he has left in his trembling, snap-tense muscles to hold his ground when his father meets his eyes, says, ‘So you promise me that this was a badly thought through prank, nothing more?’

Mischa crosses his fingers against Sascha’s back. ‘I promise. I’m sorry, I was only trying to get them to stop distracting Sash. We’ll make them delete the photos.’

His father levels a long, searching stare at him in silence until Mischa almost flinches from it, feeling like all his lies and sins might be ripped out to be examined any second. Finally Alexander sighs heavily, and it’s a dismissal as much as an acceptance.

‘Make sure you get rid of all the copies. I never want to see these photos again, understand?’

 _I don’t want to see them in news articles_ ; Mischa hears the unspoken warning clear as if it’s been spelled out in giant neon print. Nodding woodenly, he reaches around the hunched-tense Sascha almost on autopilot, grabbing the photos off the desk before he tugs at Sascha’s shirt with the paper already crumpling in his grip.

‘Sash,’ he says when his brother doesn’t move. ‘Come on. Think we could all do with some space tonight, yeah?’

‘Sorry,’ Sascha says, low and rough as if his voice is scraping out through thorns. ‘I- I’m sorry.’

Spinning so fast on his heel that he catches Mischa by surprise, he pushes past and he’s out the door in seconds, head down and shoulders curved in around himself in the way that suggests misery or imminent violence and shit, that’s going to need sorting before they have this out. Mischa’s already turning to go after him when their father says, quiet,

‘Mischa.’

Mischa pulls up short, the sick, sinking feeling in his stomach like an anchor.

‘Yeah?’ he asks. It’s almost a whisper.

‘Both of you have a duty to be responsible,’ Alexander says, pinning his elder son into place with a look. His tone is heavy with the promise of consequences. ‘But Sascha is young enough to have an excuse. You are not. Do you understand me?’

Mischa, with crushing, dawning certainty, does. Sascha might get to laugh off kissing his brother, might not be seen to fully understand in the eyes of their parents (even if the honesty he whispers into Mischa’s skin every night proves otherwise, full disclosure in the way his begging goes cracked and truthful when he’s being opened up by tongue and fingers; Mischa can hardly present that as evidence).

But Mischa, older, supposedly wiser, doesn’t get a free pass. He’s the one who should know better.

With the words brittle as broken glass in his throat, he says, ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘Good.’ Alexander holds his gaze a moment longer before releasing him with a shake of his head, glancing after Sascha. ‘You should make sure he’s okay. We’ll see you at breakfast.’

All of Mischa’s voice has been used up on lies; all he can do is nod, jerky, cast a hesitant look at Irina who gives him a pale imitation of her usual smile, and walk out so fast it almost stumbles into a run. Only when he’s in the hallway does he remember the photos still balled up in his hand.

First things first: find Sascha. Then burn the fucking things and fucking pray that he never has to see them ever again.

Step one is easy; Sascha’s visible down the hallway in front of the lifts, pacing furious circles into the hideous stripe-pattern of the hotel carpet as he stares at his phone. When Mischa approaches warily he doesn’t look up, shoulders tucked up defensively high in a clear _leave me alone_ signal. Beneath the tangle of hair that’s dried to a dandelion-fluff of blond his face is sickly-pale, mouth trembling around tension.

‘Sascha,’ Mischa says, trying to make his voice gentle and only managing to scrape out something anxious instead. ‘Sash, look at me.’

‘Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?’ Sascha snarls and it’s like taking a racquet to the ribs; Mischa steps back so fast he almost trips over his feet, getting out of Sascha’s space until his back hits the wall.

 _It’s how Sascha is when he’s upset_ he reminds himself over the chaotic thump of his own heartbeat, pushing down on his stinging hurt. _He doesn’t mean a word of it._ Their father calls it _Sascha’s wicked backhand_ ; their mother calls it _rude_ and makes her youngest son apologise if she overhears him. It’s tantrums on court and Juan Carlos getting unceremoniously fired when he implied that practicing so much with Mischa was holding Sascha back; it’s the careless cruelty that Mischa’s seen land in Marcelo’s grimaces sometimes, Sascha honing the edge of his jokes too sharp.

Seen too the way Marcelo always lets it slide, the way Mischa mostly does, because they both know there’s not an ounce of true malice in Sascha. He’s just young and hungry, everything he feels simmering right there beneath his skin. When he lashes out he regrets it, and he’s getting better with age, less raw and more cautious, taking more care with the things he loves.

Since this thing between them started – even since before – he’s always taken that care with Mischa.

In fact, since this thing between them moved from over-friendly touches that they didn’t talk about to Sascha’s mouth trembling against Mischa’s, damp and hot and desperately brave in that single world-shattering instant, all their arguments have ended in Sascha backing down, visibly curbing his tongue. Sometimes Mischa can’t shake the impression that Sascha’s still waiting for the penny to drop, forever expecting today to be the day that Mischa decides he’s bored of hiding behind closed doors and risking ruin in not-quite-empty locker rooms. Waiting for Mischa to call a halt to the whole thing with the tired, sensible logic of a big brother who shouldn’t be pressing his little brother’s hips into the mattress with Sascha’s cock salt-heavy on his tongue at every chance they get.

No matter how often Mischa whispers the truth of his adoration into every inch of Sascha’s body under the safety of darkness and locked doors, there’s been the persistent nagging sense that his brother is always on his best behaviour when they’re together to keep Mischa from changing his mind.

And up until half an hour ago, Mischa couldn’t have sworn in good faith that he wouldn’t.

He loves Sascha so fiercely that it hurts, as if love is a hook lodged around his ribs that tugs whenever he’s swamped with guilt over what they’re doing, over all the advantage he could be seen to be taking with his little brother. Their father wasn’t wrong; Mischa’s so much older than Sascha, old enough to know better, and he’s so terribly afraid of fucking Sascha up in some irreparable way that it seemed safer to always give Sascha the out, to never ever tie him down to the flaming train wreck they could turn into at any second.

Now, right now standing in the middle of the inferno with all their careful subterfuge ripped apart in an instant, Mischa discovers with blinding clarity that he loves Sascha more than enough to let himself burn.

He’s been such an _idiot_.

‘Sascha,’ he says, almost croaked out and his brother’s fingers, intimately familiar, still against his phone screen. ‘We need to talk about this at least.’

Sascha still doesn’t look at him. His hand’s trembling, white-knuckled around his phone. ‘I- I know. We can, soon, but there’s something I need to do first.’

Mischa stares at him. ‘What could you possibly need to do right now that matters more than -’ he lowers his voice, suddenly aware that they’re in the middle of a hotel hallway with occupied rooms all around, ‘- than talking about how we almost just got outed to Mum and Dad?’

There’s a breath where he thinks Sascha might actually look at him – that he might see the desperation writ clear on Mischa’s face and somehow intuit his feelings the way he’s done for years. Only a breath – and then Sascha’s phone pings a new message tone and the possibility’s lost. Sascha looks at the screen instead and hisses out a triumphant breath.

‘ _Yes_ , Marcelo,’ he mutters, mouth curling around a satisfaction that’s almost vicious. He thumbs something on the screen and as he puts the phone to his ear he finally, finally looks up. Whatever he catches on Mischa’s face makes his own go raw and wide open for the space of a blink, the flash of blue as his eyes widen telling that he’s hanging onto composure by the thinnest of threads.

‘Don’t- we’ll talk, okay?’ he says, laced with strain. ‘Only let me do this first.’

‘Do _what_?’ Mischa demands. That bare glimpse of agony in Sascha’s expression felt like someone reached into his chest to grip his lungs and squeeze; if anyone else put that look in his brother’s eyes, Mischa would hunt them to the ends of the Earth but this is over _him_ and he needs to fix this like he needs air. ‘Sash, come on – what did Marcelo tell you? He wouldn’t do this, we both know that, so what-’

The faint murmur of someone answering Sascha’s call cuts him off, Sascha’s free hand flapping at him in warning. ‘Aisam, hi it’s Sascha,’ he says and Mischa briefly forgets to be devastated in his confusion – Aisam? Why would the doubles player have anything to do with this? Sascha must have asked Marcelo for his number so he must suspect something, but Aisam’s always been perfectly pleasant to him so why-

‘Yeah,’ Sascha’s answering a question, ‘Sascha Zverev. Sorry to bother you but I found Stefanos’ watch in the locker room.’ His voice is the thinly-held calm of a lie and Mischa, two steps behind his brilliant, focused little brother as always, drops into understanding like going over a cliff. That _bastard_.

Sascha cuts him another one of those lightning glances at his sharp intake of breath, biting his lip. ‘Yeah, I’m in the hotel,’ he says, gaze dropping to rest at Mischa’s feet. ‘Do you have his room number so I can drop it- that’s great, 212? Thanks Aisam.’ He doesn’t even wait to end the call before he’s striding down the hallway with the promise of violence in his fist clenched at his side, long legs eating up the distance towards room 212 and Mischa, still dazed at how fast his entire life is going to shit, thinks _Sash is actually going to murder him unless I stop him_ and he swears out loud in every language he speaks.

Stefanos would deserve it. Sascha doesn’t.

Cramming the crumpled photos into the pocket of his hoodie, Mischa pushes off the wall so hard he almost falls and breaks into a run toward room 212.

He’s too slow; by the time he reaches it Sascha’s already knocked and stepped smartly to one side – so Stefanos won’t see him through the spyhole and decide not to open the door Mischa realises, cursing under his breath as he stumbles to a halt next to Sascha. He wants to reach out to catch his brother’s wrist, make Sascha stop avoiding his eyes but right now he doesn’t know if he wants Mischa to touch him.

‘Sash,’ he says, softly urgent. ‘Don’t do anything you’ll regret.’

‘What, like ruin his entire life?’ Sascha’s staring at the brass room number, jaw clenched against his obvious trembling and Mischa thinks _fuck it_ , hand halfway out to rest on Sascha’s shoulder when 212’s door opens.

‘Hel-’ Stefanos’s voice starts with the uptick of a question, not seeing them hidden to one side until Sascha lunges forward to slam the door back against the wall, suddenly looming massive and furious in the doorway. Over his brother’s shoulder Mischa sees Stefanos blanch, flinching back out of punching range in a guilty tell.

‘Hi Stefanos,’ Sascha’s raw tone’s gone quietly vicious. ‘You look surprised. Didn’t think I’d work it out?’

‘Work what out?’ Stefanos tries but his conviction gives out in the middle. Mischa sees the wince cross his face the instant his voice cracks and curses again, misses his grab for Sascha’s shoulder as his not-so-little-brother plants a hand on Stefanos’ chest and _shoves_ , following the other player into his room as he stumbles backwards.

‘Why’d you do it?’ he’s demanding as Stefanos backs away from the fury crackling in Sascha’s tone, both fists clenched when Mischa darts in after them wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do if this turns into a fight. Sascha’s so laid back most of the time that everyone half-forgets he’s built like a tree now, still all length without bulk but whip-lethal just the same. When he digs in his heels, he’s an immovable wall. ‘What was it? Waiting since that match in Toronto to get revenge? Couldn’t deal with the thought of my brother fucking me, of his dick in my mouth?’

‘For fuck’s sake Sash,’ Mischa mutters, checking the door’s shut behind them. Neither of the other two so much as glance at him, Stefanos riveted on Sascha with eyes wide over the stubborn set of his jaw.

‘Yeah it was me,’ Stefanos says after a long pause where he clearly considers his options and decides attack is the best defense. He lifts up his chin in defiance which doesn’t do much for Mischa’s already rock-bottom estimate of his intelligence; Sascha’s almost shaking with rage in front of him, hardly needs encouragement to unleash a punch. ‘So you worked out it was me, well done you and your cleverness but you are one who is kissing your brother in locker rooms. You did not even look around, not notice me right there around the corner! What if it had not been me, how would it be looking if someone else was to know?’

Sascha’s English is so choked with fury, it’s almost unintelligible. ‘So that is why you did it? You thought someone else should know? You didn’t think of just _talking_ to me-’

‘No, I-’ Stefanos hesitates, a shadow of confusion crossing his belligerent expression. ‘What? No, you were not to know it was me. It was to make you be more careful, you and your stupid brother-’ (Mischa sees Sascha’s fists go white-knuckled at that, the twitch of muscle as he obviously considers lashing out – sees and does nothing to stop if it happens, because that one stung) ‘-you both roll around the locker rooms as if no one can see you, as if you are immune from consequence when you, you are the face of the next gen, you get found out with this then we all look bad. It was only to make you _realise_.’

‘Realise what, that we’re fucked up?’ Sascha hisses. ‘ _That’s_ why you gave those fucking photos to our parents?’

Stefanos’s expression goes from self-righteous, to shocked, to resigned to being punched in the face faster than Mischa can think, _fuck_.

‘What?’ Stefanos says faintly. ‘They were in your room?’

‘Was my room. _Was_. Now it’s _theirs_ and you didn’t write my name on the envelope but I recognised your handwriting in the numbers, you fucking voyeuristic stupid _asshole_ -’ Sascha’s voice sinks to a snarl and his arm comes up, fist drawn back fast as a snake striking and anyone else would be too slow, anyone who didn’t know every inch of Sascha and his body language in every possible situation, who wasn’t fluent in the slightest twitch of muscle.

Before his arm can snap forward, Mischa’s caught it.

‘Sash,’ he says, low, his hand tight around Sascha’s bicep. ‘He didn’t mean to do it.’

‘That doesn’t change the fact that he _did_ -’

‘No, but it should maybe change how much he deserves to get punched in the face for it.’

Sascha holds still for another breath of tension, muscles rigid under Mischa’s hand; to his credit Stefanos doesn’t flinch, his wide eyes on Sascha’s raised fist. Just as Mischa’s debating another tack Sascha lets out a snarl of pure frustration and drops his arm, pulling free of Mischa’s grip.

‘You’re not worth breaking my serving hand,’ he tells Stefanos bitterly. ‘But this is a one time offer. If I so much as hear these pictures mentioned in the locker room-‘

Stefanos, because he’s kind of a shit even on a good day, rolls his eyes. ‘Yes, because I was trying to get you to _stop_ flaunting yourselves to the entire tour so I could do it instead. I am not stupid Sascha, they are already deleted.’

‘How do we know that’s true?’ Mischa asks. He’s still braced to catch Sascha if he lunges forward; Stefanos can wind him up fit to snap just with the tone he uses to say _good morning,_ so Sascha backing down now doesn’t mean he won’t throw a punch at the slightest nudge. ‘You took them in the first place so we’re running thin on trust over here.’

‘And also you’re an ass-‘

Mischa grabs Sascha’s shoulder, fingers flexing a warning: _not now._ A tremor runs through the bunched muscles beneath his palm but Sascha quiets.

Stefanos watches the interplay with an expression that says he’d very much like to roll his eyes again, but he’s aware of the razor-thin line Sascha’s walking with his temper and he has a vested interest in not getting his nose broken. He settles for raising his hands in a helpless gesture.

‘Would you like to look through my phone to check?’ he demands. ‘I take them because I want to show you that you were being idiots but then I think you might hit me if I say to you face so I try to warn you from the distance and now here you are, all the threats with the fists anyway. I do not want the photos anymore than I want the media nonsense parade if you get caught so I print them myself, I delete them, you have only copies. Okay? I spend enough time looking at your face over the net, is not like I want to see it more often. Especially not doing _that._ You are both fucked up, you know?’

Sascha groans, like a growl in his throat. ‘Mischa, I _really_ want to hit him.’

‘Me too, but I think he might be telling the truth,’ Mischa admits, squeezing Sascha’s shoulder as he adds, ‘About the photos. The rest of it is none of his fucking business. Come on.’

Sascha resists the verbal prompt, and the physical one when Mischa tries to tug him back toward the door. Instead he leans forward, looming with his massive shoulders in the way he’s learning how to do, settling into his length of limb and bone enough to work out what intimidating looks like; Stefanos, hardly a short guy, has to tilt his head back to meet Sascha’s glare with his own. Sascha takes a deep breath into the silence and Mischa grits his teeth, waits for the explosion.

Quiet, conversationally sincere in his biting way, Sascha says, ‘I knew I never liked you.’

Before Stefanos can react he huffs a dismissive snort and turns, pushing past Mischa without a glance on his way out. The door slams back hard enough that the wall will never be the same but at least no one’s been hit, or is bleeding, or actively murdered. Mischa finally lets go of some of the adrenaline that’s been spiking beneath his skin ever since Sascha set off with violence promised in the clench of his fists.

Before he follows Sascha out though – always chasing at his brother’s heels; how did he not admit to himself earlier that Sascha is everything he looks to, the way his internal compass always turns? – Mischa makes himself pause. Without looking up he says, hollow with a fury he didn’t know he was capable of before today,

‘Not to escalate this dumbfuck situation again but... if you ever do anything to Sascha ever again – if you so much as _sneeze_ near him – I won’t only let him hit you.’ He does glance back then, knows how terrible his expression must be from the way Stefanos actually rocks back a step. ‘I’ll beat the shit out of you myself. Understand?’

For a second, a pause and eternity when all Mischa wants is to chase after Sascha, it looks like Stefanos might make the mistake of arguing. Mischa frowns, half-turning and the belligerence on the Greek player’s face wipes clean away on a sharp breath.

‘Yes,’ he says. He pauses, and switches to slow-bitter Russian with reluctance that might be masking guilt, if Mischa was making a generous assessment, ‘You know... I do it also because I was not so sure you — you, not Sascha — had thought about what you do, but I see now.’

Mischa hesitates. ‘See what?’

‘The way you look at him.’ Stefanos grimaces and meets his glare with a shrug, a lukewarm apology but one all the same. ‘I honestly did not mean for it to turn into this. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s too fucking late for _sorry_ ,’ Mischa snarls, patience gone, and takes off out the room before he can do something regretful, like punching Stefanos directly in the middle of his _I see the way you look at him_ face. It wouldn’t fix anything and it’s not Stefanos’ fault that Mischa’s only now realising how much he needs this fucked up, co-dependent, as-necessary-as-breathing relationship he has with his brother.

Only now when he’s afraid he just spoke the truth and this is it, too late for _sorry_ to stop him losing Sascha for good.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mischa finally realises that in some cases, honesty actually is the best policy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was honestly supposed to be almost finished when I first posted chapters 1 and 2 weeks ago. Then Mischa decided to dump a bucket of feels all over everything and life dogpiled me, and after all that it took way longer than anticipated. But it got there! (Sorry). 
> 
> Also posting this very sleep-deprived at 1am means there's going to be typos but it's my only free time for the next three days (see exhibit a: life, dogpiling) so please excuse, they'll be fixed as I spot them.

* * *

 

With loss uppermost in his thoughts, it’s almost a surprise to trip over Sascha waiting just outside Stefanos’ room.

‘I didn’t know where to go,’ he says at Mischa’s soft, startled sound. He looks a little lost standing in the middle of the hallway, his hands tucked around his chest now he doesn’t have fury to keep them occupied, making himself smaller the way he does when he lets himself be uncomfortable about the giant angles of his limbs taking up so much space in the world. 

It’s how he stands the rare times when he’s feeling awkward, afraid of giving anyone reason to criticise and Mischa’s heart stutters. None of this is _Sascha’s_ fault.

He tries to smile to ease some of Sascha’s tight misery, finds it sits crooked on his face when he’s miserable himself but Sascha’s shoulders let down a notch. Good enough.

‘My room?’ Mischa suggests, quiet. ‘It’s closest – unless it’s better to go to yours? Different floor to Mum and Dad, might be good to have more space.’

‘Yours, I think.’ Sascha worries at his lower lip. ‘Dad still has a key for mine so he could… not that it matters, I mean.’ His eyes flicker shut as the misery cracks through his pokerface briefly. ‘He could walk in right, we’re only talking?’

Heart trying to climb up into his throat, Mischa nods and covers his smile crumpling by turning toward his room. This is it then; Sascha couldn’t be much clearer if he’d spelled it out in neon Sharpie. They’re going to talk and smooth things over and they’re never going to touch ever again.

If he’d known kissing Sascha in the locker room – Christ, was that barely an hour ago? – was going to be their last kiss, he would’ve taken the time to memorise every curve and sharp angle of him, all the expanse of pale, sunkissed skin and the sweet sound he made every time Mischa slid their tongues together.

Actually, who’s he trying to kid. If someone had told him it was the last time and he’d believed them, he would’ve pushed Sascha into the showers and let him come with his cock down Mischa’s throat. Tennis is a fast-moving sport; Mischa’s learned a thing or two about creating lasting memories.

Not that it matters now. He knows plenty about missed opportunities, too.

They walk the short stretch of hallway to Mischa’s room in silence which makes sense; they both know from experience that hotel doors aren’t soundproof. Mischa still gets a rush of mortification remembering Marcelo last year, asking Sascha, ‘ _So who make you, hm, shout so loud when I knock at your room last night, I was not thinking you had the girlfriend yet no?_ ’ and the way Sascha had gone bright red, stumbling out an excuse about a random fan and bad ideas. The last thing they need is to accidentally out themselves mid-breakup to anyone watching through the spyholes but when they reach Mischa’s door and he’s watching Sascha trudge in ahead of him like a man walking to his own execution or a hardcore workout session with Jez, he realises he has no idea what to say once they’re inside.

He has no right to try to talk Sascha into keeping this going when Mischa’s been the one holding back for years – suggesting they date other people, going back to his own room to sleep more often than not so they didn’t wake up tangled sleepy-warm and comfortable together in the mornings. Telling Sascha that he loved him casually, lightheartedly, as if he was only passing the time of day.

What can he say to make up for three years of, to all appearances, treating Sascha like they really were just messing around? No matter that he thought it was best for Sascha; it was still a terrible way to treat the brother he loved more than anything.

And it hadn’t even _worked_. They’d been found out anyway.

In the room with the door closed, silence thick in the air, Sascha doesn’t seem to have any more idea of where to start than Mischa. He wanders over to the bed to sit on the end, elbows on his knees and all the impossibly lovely angles of him folded in on himself. The rumpled mass of blond falls forward, hiding his face.

Mischa stays leaning back against the desk, gripping the edge of it behind his back. It seems – safer.

‘Fuck,’ Sascha says after a minute. ‘So that was awful.’

Mischa swallows against the tightness in his throat. ‘Yeah.’

‘We properly fucked up.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And now Mum and Dad will be watching us all the time to see if we were telling the truth.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And we have to trust Stefanos to keep his mouth shut which is basically the same as asking a river to flow uphill.’

‘Yeah.’

Sascha exhales explosively, hitched halfway as if he’s choking back a desperate sound. ‘Basically we’re fucked.’

Bracing himself against the churn of nausea in his stomach, Mischa tries to keep his trembling knees from giving way. Here it comes.

‘Yes,’ he says and Sascha – instead of agreeing, against all expectation — Sascha launches himself up off the bed with a snarl, eyes narrowed in his pale, furious face.

‘Is that all you’re going to say?!’ It’s almost a shout, his tone abruptly seething with fury. He takes a sharp step toward Mischa with fists clenched and Mischa, miserable and angry at himself and so, so fucking confused, holds his ground as Sascha snaps, ‘That’s _it_? You’re not going to argue for this – for us?! Am I too much fucking _trouble_ for you to handle after all?’

He almost spits out that last but the anger in it twists into something else, side-swiped by genuine devastation and Mischa’s heart breaks.

‘Sash,’ he says, straining to keep it level because one of them has to stay calm. ‘What do you want me to say? Stefanos is an idiot but he’s not wrong about what’ll happen if anyone else finds out about this. Players don’t even come out as gay in tennis; can you imagine what the press will do to you if this got out?’

‘ _US_!’

Sascha’s shout bounces off the walls and he ignores Mischa’s flinch, breathing fast and lit up incandescent with anger, eyes the clear, bitter colour of a thunderstorm sky as he glares at his brother. ‘ _Us_ , Mischa!’ he shouts, ‘what they’d do to us! I’m younger sure, but I know what I’m doing. There isn’t only me to worry about in this fucking mess. You _matter.’_

Mischa feels like he’s been sandpapered all over, raw and pinned down by Sascha’s wide, fever-bright stare. ‘Sash,’ he says, so quiet it almost hides the quiver to it, ‘it isn’t that I don’t matter. It’s that I have a responsibility-’

‘ _Bullshit!_ ’ Sascha shouts. Sweeps of colour flush along his cheeks, gesturing wildly with one hand as if to throw Mischa’s words aside and he’s beautiful at the centre of the storm, everything Mischa loves in the entire world right there and breaking apart despite Mischa’s best intentions. He must make a sound, low in his throat, because Sascha catches himself mid-step in closing the distance between them, hands fisting convulsively as if to stop himself reaching out – or stop himself throwing a punch, Mischa’s not sure.

He thinks that maybe he deserves one.

Instead Sascha breathes out his rage in one long, shaky hiss between his teeth. When he looks at Mischa again, there’s the glass-shine of tears before he blinks them back.

‘I know why you think that,’ he says raggedly. He’s looking over Mischa’s shoulder rather than directly at him now, throwing himself at the words as if he needs to drag himself through to the end. ‘I know you’ve never thought that this – that _we_ were a good idea. I know I pushed you and I’m sorry and if you don’t want to anymore, of course that’s fine, this mess isn’t what you signed on for.’ He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, worrying at it the way he does his necklaces on court, Mischa’s soft chiding that he’ll chip a tooth ignored because they both know that watching Sascha tongue the chains is a turn on.

‘If you want to stop, we can stop,’ he says. His voice doesn’t quite tremble. ‘But only if it’s what you _want_.’

Every muscle in Mischa’s body feels stretched and out of alignment, off-balance with the dizzying weight of what Sascha’s saying. Of course he’d known that Mischa was holding back – Sascha’s bright and bold, so much smarter than Mischa thinks he is himself – but that he’d thought it was his fault – that he’d been worried all this time about what he was doing to _Mischa_ , while Mischa was blaming himself for taking advantage of _Sascha –_

‘Fuck, Sash,’ he says, and his voice cracks right down the middle with the weight of three years of withheld honesty. ‘All I want is for you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, I love you. I don't think I'm going to love anyone this much ever again.’

Sascha’s voice does shake this time. ‘Same. So where does that leave us?’

 _I don’t know_ , Mischa could say. Could murmur the tired, sensible logic of the older brother, point out what a truly terrible idea it is to carry on with this when their parents all but know, will be watching their every move from now on. Could use this crisis point to say _I love you but_ and they’d carry on in every way other than this, never touching, never tasting, drifting apart to possibly love other people in a halfhearted, pale echo of a way, watching each other pretend to be happy. It’d be excruciating but simpler; it’d certainly be safer for both of them.

Mischa could say any number of things – should be the one to say some of them, for their own good.

He’s so tired of making them both miserable _for their own good_.

Without saying a word, he holds out his hand. And Sascha, with a helpless fractured sound that could be a sob if either of them would admit it, crosses the space between them in a single stride to grasp Mischa’s outstretched fingers, fold them together in a vice grip and yank their bodies flush chest to chest, catching Mischa’s broken, grateful whisper of ‘ _Sash_ ,’ between their warm mouths.

‘You make me happy,’ Sascha says when they finally break the kiss, barely pulling back so everything is heat and ragged breath, the words pressed against Mischa’s lips. ‘This makes me happy but only if you want it, and I wasn’t sure-’

‘I’m sure now.’ Mischa curls a hand into the fine hair at the nape of Sascha’s neck, twines their fingers together so tight they might cramp around their racquets tomorrow. ‘Really – I always thought maybe you’d change your mind if you wanted something normal.’ He takes a shaky breath, letting himself shape the words for the first time out loud rather than a half-buried whisper of shame. ‘I’m sorry, I do want this if you do, I love you. To hell with what everyone would say.’

‘Fuck Mischa,’ Sascha says, the rawness of a plea in his tone and Mischa answers, brings them together again with his tongue invading Sascha’s lips, wet and heat and Sascha’s moans disintegrating any composure he had left. His lungs are aching for air, Sascha’s gasps rasping around the kiss but neither of them break it, tangled so tight it’s like trying to climb into each other’s skin, bracing each other upright as they shake. If Sascha let go now, Mischa knows he’d fall.

There’s more than one way to save someone from drowning and he thinks this, Sascha’s sinful mouth on his and all their honesty spilled out bright and shining between them, might be one.

‘You saved both our asses today you know,’ he says, running his hands up to tangle in Sascha’s wild hair, keeping them close. ‘I panicked when I saw the pictures and Dad’s face, I would’ve stuck my foot in it.’

‘I’ve thought about it before,’ Sascha admits, ‘what I might say.’ He pauses, leaning down the extra inches to press his forehead against Mischa’s; he’s warm enough that he might be blushing. ‘Though I thought it’d be them catching us actually kissing. Photos were easier.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Mischa can feel the crumpled paper like a rock in his hoodie pocket, waiting to damn them again at the slightest slip. They can’t burn anything in the hotel without setting off the fire alarm so his initial impulse is a no-go, but he doesn’t know if he has the nerve to take them outside – or worse, through the airport to get them home. Maybe if they shred them to confetti, scatter the pieces into separate waste bins.

The mental image of Sascha’s grin, beautiful even in the off-true colours of the printing, flashes behind his closed eyes and the thought of ripping it into pieces inexplicably makes his stomach flip.

 _Of all the ridiculous times to get sentimental_ he thinks, irritated, and kisses Sascha again as a distraction, trying to lose himself in the bruised-warm slide of their mouths together. Sascha’s still breathing hard, hot little pants trapped between them as he trails his hands down to Mischa’s hips and – and _oh_ , once again Mischa’s the slow one because his brother’s hips pressed flush to his make it clear that Sascha’s not only trying to climb into Mischa’s skin because he’s upset about the photos after all.

‘Sash,’ he murmurs, hearing the arousal hitch in his voice. ‘Now, really?’

‘When else? We’re not going to get a moment to touch tomorrow, they’ll be watching us every minute.’ Sascha’s words are more sure than his tone, edged in a raw plea. His hands are tight on Mischa’s hips and he’s hard, pressed obvious between them despite layers of fabric. Mischa’s not far behind with the heat and the friction, their long day of teasing before the last hour which he’s spent shaking with adrenaline and desperation that he’d never get to touch Sascha again. Now it’s been offered, all his body wants is to be buried in Sascha so deep that nothing could pry them apart.

‘Please Mischa.’ Sascha’s gasps are hitching around the deliberate grind of his hips now as if he can sense Mischa’s resolve weakening. ‘Need- fuck. Fuck me.’

 _Fuck_ Mischa thinks, heat flaring low and he shakes with it, hands clenching in Sascha’s hair. It’s what he wants too, what he was half-thinking of ever since the locker room and Sascha’s _I’ll let you fuck me tonight to make up for it._ Around the tour and different schedules, they don’t get the chance often – not as often as he suspects Sascha would like from his bull-in-a-china-shop-subtle hints – and they have a match to play tomorrow, usually the deciding factor that leads to them coming in hands or mouths or one of Mischa’s favourites, held tight between Sascha’s lean thighs, rather than risk moving stiff on court. He’d been thinking about it with the wistful filter that meant if Sascha had asked an hour ago, Mischa would’ve said no.

Now, honesty and sin out in the open between them and knowing they barely survived the possibility of losing this permanently, he says,

‘Are you sure?’

Sascha’s only thrown for a second by his uncharacteristic acquiescence. ‘... _Yes_ ,’ he breathes, and grinds his hips in hard enough that Mischa has to catch a moan against his teeth. ‘I need it, tonight’s been a shit show, I need-’

‘I know.’ Mischa does. The acid-burn of fear from when he’d seen the photos is still there and might always be, scar tissue fresh and bitter in his chest where his panic sits. To bury it he needs tangible reassurance that they’re both still intact, map every inch of the long sunkissed stretch of Sascha beneath his fingertips as he comes apart. ‘Okay, okay,’ he says, ‘Lube’s in the bathroom, I’ll get it – get on the bed and don’t have too much fun ‘til I’m back.’

‘It’s never fun without you,’ Sascha tells him. Too fast, not quite teasing enough to pass as a joke and Mischa pulls back in time to see the same realisation cross his brother’s face, crooked smile edged rueful. He ducks his head in response to Mischa’s raised eyebrows. ‘Well it’s not,’ he mutters.

Mischa feels his throat go tight. ‘Holy fuck Sash,’ he manages, finally. ‘How can you be so _sure_?’

And he didn’t mean to let that out – only Mischa’s hardly ever sure of _anything_ ; tennis gets derailed by one fall on court, Sascha warm and laughing beneath his hands is only as certain as their next forgetful moment in the locker room. Sometimes he feels as if his entire life is suspended on slender threads, waiting for fate to come along with scissors, as it almost had tonight. 

But some of the light immediately goes out of Sascha’s smile and Mischa wishes he could claw the careless words back, swallow them.

‘Sorry,’ he adds, throwing it hasty against the wall of Sascha’s careful pokerface. ‘I mean, I love you and I’m sure of this, obviously.’

‘I know.’ Sascha leans down to kiss his forehead, a ticklish brush of chapped lips. ‘Don’t worry so much Mischa, remember? Get the stuff, we should make the most of tonight.’

Unable to pinpoint the subtle shift in atmosphere other than that there _is_ one, Mischa tugs once at Sascha’s hair because he knows his brother likes the edge of roughness, and prises himself away from their shared heat. There’s nothing in the smile Sascha flashes over his shoulder to suggest anything’s changed but Mischa watches him pace over to the bed, hand casual between his legs to draw a breathy moan, and wonders if he’s imagining the slump of his brother’s broad shoulders.

It isn’t until he’s in the bathroom, tossing aside mini bottles of hotel shampoo and the spare toothbrushes he keeps for when Sascha stays too late to sneak back to his own room, that he lets himself admit he properly stuck his foot in his mouth after all. Sascha’s honesty caught him by surprise – always does, that it comes to easy to him – and Mischa defaulted back to dismissal, three years of habit with shutting down the possibility this might be the only thing they both want. Barely an hour after he’d decided this was _everything_ he wanted and to hell with the consequences.

Fuck. He’s terrible at this; he wants it but all his boundary lines are off. If he’s going to make this work – to commit now, when everything is a hundred percent more complicated than when they’d woken up this morning – he owes Sascha to do better.

Maybe owes it a little bit to himself, too.

Lube in hand, he goes back into the bedroom and pauses to marvel.

Sascha’s pulled the drapes against Basel’s bright glitter and switched on a single lamp against the falling dark, the room soft-hued in pale gold and pockets of velvet shadow like the most careful stage-setting for him to strip. He’s got his back to Mischa, shirt already off as he thumbs open his jeans and in the warm wash of light the leaness of him is a work of art, hair a darker spun gold against his skin, light catching fire in the links of his chains. When he drops his jeans Mischa whistles a low sound of appreciation and Sascha spins round.

‘What-’ he starts before registering the hunger Mischa knows is written all over his face. Surprise chases a blush, automatic, before Sascha tilts his head with that self-assured little smirk he’s grown into as much as his height.

‘Enjoying the free show?’ he asks, one thumb hooked into the waistband of his boxers. ‘The lapdance is extra, I hope you brought enough.’

Playing along Mischa shows his right hand, palm up and empty. ‘Fresh out.'

Shaking his head in faked disappointment, Sascha slides his hand free of his underwear. He’s terrible at roleplay usually, always has been, laughs too easily and gives too quickly to Mischa’s touch, but this time he’s barely smirking.

‘That’s a shame,’ he says, trailing idle fingers up the ridges of his chest, slender sweep of hands that can fire devastating serves delicate now as he flicks a nipple and shivers. His voice dips hoarse when he adds, ‘I’m afraid the management frown on free gifts. How are you going to make it worth my while?’

‘I can be very creative,’ Mischa rasps. He’s so hard now, the rub of fabric over his cock is a relentless friction and he has to move on legs that don’t feel quite steady. Without looking he tosses the lube at the bed and stalks toward Sascha who’s still watching him, head tilted, hand still on his chest that’s rising and falling in a quick, betraying rhythm. When Mischa halts at arm’s length, he breaks character to blow out an exasperated huff.

‘Come on, do I need to draw you a map?’

Mischa raises his eyebrows, mock-solemn. ‘I thought you weren’t sure it’d be worth your while?’

‘I’ll take my chances,’ Sascha breathes, and cants forward, helpless, as if Mischa’s a magnet drawing him in. ‘Mischa, please-’

No one could resist the break in Sascha’s voice and Mischa has no desire to try; before the sound’s even half out he’s invading Sascha’s space, hand hard on one lean hip and the rough edge of stubble on his palm as he tilts Sascha’s mouth into the kiss. Hard muscle and bone against him in a dizzying expanse of skin, all the new planes and angles that Sascha’s burnished into himself since that first kiss when he was still thin, teenage-lanky, and pressing them back against the apartment door with Mischa too afraid of himself to touch.

Remembering, he makes up for it now, skates rough fingertips up the curve of Sascha’s back, pressing hard to leave the touch-imprint lingering of everywhere he’s been because he has to believe now; this is _his_ , he’s allowed – if not by the wide world then at least by Sascha, and that’s the only permission that matters.

‘On the bed,’ he says, teeth catching sharp on Sascha’s lower lip. He feels the full-body shiver rock Sascha to his toes in response.

‘Yes _Sir_ ,’ Sascha murmurs, the curve of his smile in both his tone and the lopsided kiss he steals before stepping back. Defiantly he pushes down his underwear first, cock popping hard and flushed from beneath white cotton, the finished masterpiece and Mischa can’t shrug out of his hoodie fast enough. It drops, shirt yanked carelessly off with sweat already gathering damp in the flush of arousal and the warm room, with the heat of Sascha still all over his skin.

When he emerges from beneath rucked fabric, he blinks back to focus to find Sascha watching him wide-eyed and hungry from the bed – flopped on his back and propped up on one elbow, all golden-pale skin marked with familiar tan lines, necklaces caught in a tangle against his collarbone. His hand is jerking his cock between the impossibly-long stretch of thighs, twitching between his fingers and the pulse of arousal that hits Mischa almost makes him stagger before he locks his knees.

As if he knows (of course he knows, a fast learner in all the ways his body makes him a weapon on and off the court) Sascha grins the intimate little grin he’d been wearing in the photos.

‘Not having- fun over here- without you,’ he says, tripping over the rasp in his throat and Mischa hisses out a curse, not even sure which language he uses as he shucks his shorts and underwear together, kicking them aside as he stumbles to the bed. Sascha’s gaze drops to his cock, dark and achingly hard, pure want in the shaky breath he sucks in as Mischa pushes his thighs wide to climb between them, grip firm to the point of bruising.

When Mischa catches his wrist to still the motion against his cock though he groans a protest, flash of sharp teeth on his lip.

‘No more messing around Mischa, fuck me, don’t make me wait-’

‘And what if I want to make waiting worth your while?’

Mischa meets the startled flash of a glance from his brother with a smile that’s a promise and a taunt, his grip tight on Sascha’s wrists. Usually he lets Sascha take the lead in the bedroom (or locker room, or showers, or once, memorably, on his back on a tennis court at midnight, with the Florida humidity slicking them hot and dripping until their grind together was terrifyingly, exhilaratingly easy) but he needs to prove to Sascha that he’s all in. It’s time to make a point.

Sascha’s eyes are wide in his flushed face, shaded the colour of sunlight through water in the lamplight and shadowed with something like uncertainty – or darker, the acknowledgment that he might be bruised and the want for it. When he relinquishes his wrists to Mischa’s grip with palms up, limp with trust, that and his ragged exhale is enough of an answer.

‘Good boy,’ Mischa breathes, grin all teeth and Sascha actually fucking _trembles_ under him as Mischa raises his arms over his head to press them, firm, out of touching reach against the rucked pillows. ‘Stay,’ he murmurs, braced over the impossibly long stretch of Sascha shaking beneath him with their only points of contact his fingers locked warm around Sascha’s tanned wrists; when Sascha pushes his hips up, cautiously testing, Mischa arcs up to keeps them apart and gives his brother a pointed look.

‘Of course, if you’d rather me jerk you off quick and go back to your room for a good night’s sleep then-’

‘ _No_.’ Sascha almost sobs it out, trying to twist his wrists to grip Mischa’s hands, hold him in place. ‘No, fuck, stay. I’ll stay.’ He’s staring up at Mischa now as if he’s a marvel Sascha’s never seen before, wonder in the slack part of his mouth, in his racing breath. Sweat’s darkened his hair, slicking it in damp little curls to his forehead and Mischa thinks briefly of the apple bobbing, the gleam of water and Sascha watching him bright and teasing through his dripping hair.

It feels like a lifetime ago. As if someone else had flirted with Sascha carelessly and without knowing what it was worth, what it meant to go through trial by fire and walk out the other side, tarnished but with this still his.

Knowing now, Mischa smiles - watches it reflect on Sascha’s face as he leans down to kiss the gasps for air from his brother’s mouth. ‘Glad to hear it,’ he murmurs and lets go of Sascha’s wrists. They stay obediently above his head, fingers gripping white-knuckled into the pillow and the trust that Sascha’s offering – that he offers up so easily to Mischa every day, for the last three years – is humbling, that tug again in his chest that says _do not fuck this up._

 _I won’t_ he promises silently to himself, trailing kisses down the tanned arc of Sascha’s neck, licking salt-sweat from his pulsepoint with the flat of his tongue because he can’t leave the visible marks he wants to write everywhere into Sascha’s skin like signing a promise. His father wasn’t wrong; Mischa knows he has a responsibility, but he has a responsibility to Sascha too and he’s finally choosing to trust Sascha to know what he wants. What they both want _._

With that certainty settled under his skin, he sets out to map every last inch of Sascha with rough, reverent worship.

At first with his mouth, drag of lips down the vulnerable line of arced throat, teeth sharper on the sweeping wings of his collarbone where the red branding might be hidden by his shirt. He devotes time to the contemplation of the nipple he’d been taunted with earlier, alternating tongue and teeth over the nub, the breathless, broken sounds Sascha makes every time Mischa bites down going straight to his cock until it’s everything he can do not to press down hard to Sascha’s thigh and grind. As he moves down the laddered ridges of Sascha’s ribs, his abs quivering with every breath, he lets his hands drift through the slick of sweat to dig nails into each and every curve; when he bites at the flat stretch of Sascha’s quivering stomach, he has to press down hard at Sascha’s hips to keep him from jerking up.

‘Mischa.’ Sascha’s gasping like he’s played a five setter, been running laps around the track in Florida’s heat. His voice is shredded around his heaving breath. ‘What-’

‘Shh,’ Mischa says, pressing it against the warm jut of his hip bone. ‘I’m not done.’

Sascha grits out a mangled flutter of Russian that would probably be insulting if it wasn’t incoherent. When his cock drags, hot and wet at the tip, across Mischa’s shoulder when he shifts down though, the snarl of sound in his throat is a curse their father once grounded him for using on court.

‘Mischa, _fuck_ , I know I said I’d let you but touch me, _please-’_

His voice gives out again when Mischa licks up the sensitive crease where thigh meets hip, knowing it’s one of Sascha’s weak spots and grinning when he feels Sascha shudder. There’s the bitter tang of precome from where Sascha’s so hard that he’s dripping with it and Mischa chases the smears with his tongue, languorous and thorough in tracking down every last trace of bitter salt over hip and balls, avoiding where it counts until Sascha’s a bowstring of tension wound tight, heels dug into the sheets with his toes curled, hips arced upward into Mischa’s palms like a prayer he can’t voice around the desperate whimpers caught in his teeth.

When Mischa takes pity, finally slides his mouth across the slick head of his brother’s cock, the shout caught in Sascha’s throat comes out strangled like he’s dying.

‘ _Mischa_.’

Mischa hums a soft acknowledgment, letting his teeth trace the faintest edge of pain he knows drives Sascha wild. They do this, come like this, often enough – it’s the fastest way to bring Sascha off in the locker room showers when neither of them can wait, usually with his own hand bitten tight in his mouth to mute his moans – but this time Mischa only swipes his tongue to the slit briefly, heat and thick wetness, relearning the sharpness of Sascha’s taste before he pulls back, lips wet and so hard himself he’s almost dizzy with it.

Sascha moans another mumble of desperate Russian when he loses the promise of sensation, eyes screwed shut now and hips grinding, restless and desperate against the sheets – hands still obediently over his head in a shaking, white-knuckled grip. Sitting back on his heels Mischa surveys the thorough mess he’s wrought: Sascha sprawled across the bed gleaming with sweat and muscles in taut relief, freckled with bite marks, cock flushed red and slick between his thighs. When he blinks his eyes open they’re blown dark, dazed with the thinnest rim of ice, frown line dimpling as he tries to focus. His bitten-red lips move, soundless over words (probably curses) he can’t voice.

Staring down at the stunning wreck of the thing he loves most in the world, Mischa’s amazed all over again that something so beautiful could be his to take apart.

‘I love you Sash,’ he says without thinking, with the feeling welling up like a flood of adoration, warm and all-encompassing in his chest until he might drown in it. ‘Fuck. Just look at you.’

The arousal flush all over Sascha’s cheeks and neck deepens to a true blush. ‘I’d rather look at you,’ he rasps with his voice on the edge of gone, lopsided smile tugging at his mouth before he lets his head thump back to the mattress with a curse. ‘Though I’d rather be looking at you fucking me _now._ ’

Grinning, Mischa locates the lube under Sascha’s left ankle, gets half the tube over his hands and Sascha’s thigh when he pops the lid. ‘What happened to frowning on free gifts?’

‘You’ve paid it off,’ Sascha mumbles. Clearly past the point of embarrassment he hikes his knees up with a groan to bend in half, flex of muscles that were made for tennis but that come in more useful for other things than they could ever confess to Jez. With his arms still over his head and feet up, legs folded with his knees tucked to his chest, he’s ceded all his leverage, spread out helpless. Looking at Mischa with a dark-edged desire that says he knows exactly what he’s doing.

‘Please,’ he rasps, so soft it’s almost breathed – as if Mischa might deny him this after all and Mischa shifts forward so fast he’s clumsy with it, lube-slick hand pressed to Sascha’s bent knee as he leans down, brings their mouths together hard with the edge of teeth.

‘I’ve got you,’ he says into the kiss, sloppy and unfocused with Sascha half-high on arousal and shaking under him when Mischa reaches down blind to tease the first finger into tight, clenching heat. ‘I’ve always got you, you know that right?’

‘I heard y- _ah_ .’ Sascha jolts when Mischa curls his finger, seeking; he’s half-distant, punch-drunk, body given up to Mischa’s hands and the rest of Sascha just along for the ride. ‘Threatening Tsit- Tsis- _fuck Mischa_ – that asshole,’ he gasps, giving up on the name because Mischa curled his finger deeper every time he tried, grin trapped between their lips. ‘I can – fight my own battles you know.’

Two fingers deep now with Sascha quivering under and around him as he’s worked open, Mischa wonders not for the first time how it’s possible to love his sweet, stupidly headstrong, beautiful little brother so much that’s almost suffocating, as if the weight of it is too huge to fit inside his chest. Helpless with it he bites at Sascha’s lower lip, presses the words into the shared heat of their breath:

‘I know you can, you were fucking terrifying when you went storming off to his room. But I’m your big brother. Let me look after you sometimes, okay?’

Sascha’s non-answer of wordless sound sobs out between them on a gasp, his body flexing hot and tight, so fucking tight around Mischa’s careful fingers – three now, fast but steady, working Sascha open because they have a match tomorrow, because he’s the responsible one and sometimes that means saying _no_ , and sometimes it means saying _not yet_. He scissors them to watch Sascha throw his head back, red mouth wide around a cry, straining, beautiful, and Mischa has to still the motion of his fingers to grip himself with his other hand, so hard he can barely breathe.

‘Sash,’ he says, riding the edge of pain as he squeezes gently, holding himself back with his cock heavy and desperate in his hand. ‘You ready?’

‘Been ready. Ready for _years_ .’ Sascha’s half-mangled German comes out gutteral. ‘ _Now_ or I swear to fuck-’ He snarls it off short, grip yanking on the pillow when Mischa slides his fingers free, and mumbles something, constant and too soft to make out as Mischa kneels up, none of the words left in the sound. He hooks his arms over Sascha’s bent legs to hold him doubled up, pinned; they both might ache tomorrow but Mischa’s done caring about anything beyond this, here.

When he pushes in the first blunt inch, he leans down to catch Sascha’s cracked whimper on his tongue.

‘Fuck Sash, fuck, the way you _feel_ , breathe okay, fuck-’ He has to pause his broken stream of reassurance halfway in, gasping for air that tastes too thick and he catches the bright slit of blue when Sascha opens his eyes. ‘Hey, you okay?’

For a second too long Sascha stares at him, dazed and a flush riding high on his cheeks, all over sweat. Looking at Mischa off-focus and even half-buried inside him, even half out of his own mind and with every base instinct demanding that he move, Mischa knows the look Sascha gets when he’s overthinking. With a supreme effort of will and anxiety, he starts to pull back.

Whip-fast, Sascha grabs his shoulder. ‘Stay,’ he says, hoarse, eyes wide and depthless, holding Mischa as sure as the fingers digging bruises into his skin. ‘I’m okay, I’m okay- move _please_.’ He bucks his hips up as much as he can pinned as he is, and their groans echo. ‘Go, go, go-’

Too far gone to wonder, Mischa takes the order and trusts it. At first he’s slow, pressing careful, but the instant he bottoms out into tight heat Sascha groans long and low and that’s it, restraint abandoned as Mischa lets go.

All his intentions to take care, to wind Sascha to the brink without leaving him aching on court, for days after, disintegrate; instead he slams home, sharp rutting rhythm that’s stretch and sensation and Sascha’s enthusiastic noises, breath sobbing around encouragement in a mishmash of three languages. Everything is suffocating heat and pressure, so good it’s ecstasy and there’s already a fist of heat gathering at the base of Mischa’s spine too fast, orgasm molten just out of reach. He tightens his grip on Sascha’s shin, his hip, must be leaving fingerspans of bruises but he can’t let go, sparks and shattering all over; he’s so close to falling apart for all that Sascha’s untouched between them, cock barely brushing Mischa’s stomach on each thrust, slick and desperate but Sascha’s free hand is exactly where Mischa put it, over his head. Obedient even with grunts of helpless pleading on every out-breath, _ah ah_ as if he can bring himself off from the noise alone.

It’s a habit he falls into often enough that sometimes Mischa gets hard courtside, listening to his little brother grunt with effort as he launches into a forehand. Reading the recognition in Sascha’s eyes every time he glances over at his box and pauses at Mischa’s flushed face, the way he shivers at Sascha’s smile. The next game he’s always louder, each groan trailing into a sigh until Mischa has to excuse himself to somewhere private, knowing Sascha will pin him up against the shower wall after and lick the leftover taste of bitter salt from his skin.

‘Come on Sash,’ he gasps now, watching his brother’s lashes flutter as he tries to focus, fails. ‘What’s up, do you need me to draw you a map?’

Sascha can’t glare with his head thrown back, but the flash of bared teeth is clear enough. ‘Fuck you.’

‘Likewise.’ Mischa laughs, breathless, and lets his forehead drop to Sascha’s sweat-damp shoulder. Pleasure is a lit spark on every nerve ending, catching fire, and he’s trembling with it, teetering. Needs to get a hand on Sascha for fairness but his grip is cramped so tight he can’t feel his fingers and his coordination’s shredded.

‘Sash,’ he says, tasting salt on his lips, the vibration of Sascha’s moans, ‘You have to touch yourself, I can’t- I’m-’ He can’t finish, concentration gone but Sascha’s hand squeezes his shoulder and a second later fresh fingertips brush his cheek, his arm, Sascha reaching down to finally – to close his free hand tight on Mischa’s hip rather than himself, nails biting in a sharp shock that jolts up Mischa’s spine.

‘Now,’ Sascha whispers on the next thrust and Mischa’s gone. The molten heat erupts and he’s in freefall, on fire, aware of nothing but the ripples of bliss and the bruising-fierce twin grip of Sascha’s hands bracketing him shoulder and hip, holding him steady as he shakes apart.

When he pants back to clarity as it eases, he becomes aware again of muscle and bone, of the ache making itself known in his knees. Of Sascha’s cock still pressed hard against his stomach and his brother’s choked sounds, clenched desperate between his teeth.

Mischa blinks, reorients himself and mumbles something that’s supposed to be _I’ve got it_ , although his grasp on words is tenuous right now. Braced on arms that feel too heavy he slides down, clumsy, kisses the quivering tension of Sascha’s stomach on the way and finally, finally takes Sascha in his mouth.

He’s off-balance, sloppy, hardly his best effort but this close to the brink the heat and slick is enough, Sascha’s voice gone thready around his cursing in the way that means he’s close. Mischa hollows his cheeks and works his tongue and slides three fingers wide into the mess he’s left inside of Sascha and it only takes one press before Sascha’s coming in a perfect arc of tension, shouting loud enough to be heard in the hallway but who cares if they’re overheard; they’ve lied so much tonight already, so what if they need one more. Mischa swallows and works his fingers through the clench of muscle until Sascha whines and gasps, ‘Stop, fuck, _’_ and he lets himself pull back, press his forehead into Sascha’s trembling thigh and just breathe.

‘Fuck,’ Sascha mumbles after a minute. He shifts, hand trailing away from Mischa’s shoulder and when he looks up Sascha’s thrown one lean arm over his face. 

The sudden lurch in Mischa’s stomach is too close to concern for his liking. 

‘Sash?’ he asks, soft. Making it a question.

Sascha flaps his free hand, clumsily dismissive. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ he rasps, even though his wrist is over his eyes and he can’t damn well see Mischa anyway. ‘I’m fine. That was- fuck.’

‘Yeah.’ Mischa kisses his thigh, rough hair and the slick non-taste of lube over the flavour of Sascha still sharp in his mouth. ‘Sure you’re-’

‘Oh my _god,_ if you want me to tell you that you blew my mind with your cock then you’ll have to wait until I can see straight again for fuck’s sake,’ Sascha snaps and if he’s gone for sarcasm then he’s probably fine, Mischa grinning to himself as he pulls back. Sascha’s still hiding behind his arm, breathing slowing and the slack lines of exhaustion in his sprawl against the ruined sheets, chains a knotted tangle in the hollow of his collarbone. Still the most beautiful thing Mischa’s ever seen but he’s learned in three years of fucking that Sascha’s often tetchy when he’s coming down from orgasm, all raw edges and needing a minute to reorient himself in his own skin; anything sweet Mischa says right now will get shot down.

Instead, carefully – his legs are half-asleep, and his hips are going to rebel when he’s running for volleys tomorrow, he can feel it – Mischa slides off the bed and goes back to the bathroom.

In the mirror he looks – well, tired, but the happy kind of tired that comes from winning after five sets or racing Sascha over a 10k run, much better than he expected after the day they’ve had. Probably good he’s not out on his feet — when Sascha’s resettled himself, Mischa thinks, they still need to discuss what they’re going to do. He’s too pessimistic to think their father believed them about the photos, not entirely, and it’s going to be months of keeping his hands off Sascha anywhere their parents might raise questions, newly suspicious of hands on hips on the doubles court, Mischa’s easy arm around Sascha’s waist when they walk into press. 

They’ve always been overly tactile for brothers — it’s unconscious now almost, Mischa missing the warmth of Sascha against his side every time it’s pulled away but no one’s been tracking every too-fond trace of fingertips before. All their excuses have run thin. If he’s going to keep this from ruining Sascha’s life, both their lives, he’s going to have to learn to live with the ache of absence for a while.

He just hopes Sascha sees it that way. Mischa’s hands are shaking from exhaustion, the night’s adrenaline washing away to leave every inch of him aching; he’s got nothing left for another argument.

He washes up, forcing his hands steady on the soap and wets a towel to take back to the bed, steps back into the bedroom –

– where Sascha’s not in the loose-limbed, fucked-out sprawl Mischa left him in. Instead he’s sitting up on the opposite edge of the bed, head bowed, naked shoulders curled around himself like the hunch of an injured bird.

Every part of Mischa down to his heartbeat goes still. Despite trying his best, he’s fucked up after all.

Softly, almost afraid to break the shiftless silence, he asks, ‘Sash?’

There’s a pause that feels like it lasts a century. Then without lifting his head, Sascha says,

‘Was that goodbye?’

Was- _what-_ ‘What?’

‘That. This.’ Sascha flicks a desultory hand to indicate the wreck of the bed. His voice is light, faux casual; he could be asking about tomorrow’s order of play except for the knotted tension in the way he’s holding perfectly still, staring down at his knees. ‘You never fuck me the night before a match. Never. And then you do _that_ , and I thought – something’s up. I get it, you wanted to make the last time worth it you know?’

It’s as if they’re speaking a language they don’t share for once, the words offered up perfectly reasonable and full-formed and not comprehensible at all, Mischa unable to translate the space between Sascha coming under his mouth and hands, and this Sascha, drawn up inside himself and a thousand miles out of reach. He wants to go over, tangle his fingers in sex-rumpled curls and kiss the uncertainty from Sascha’s frown, whisper the truth of his belief all over every inch of warm skin.

But he’d tried that and look where it got them. He lets the towel drop, hangs onto the doorframe to keep himself from moving, white-knuckled until his hand hurts.

‘Today’s not exactly been a normal day,’ he tries. Fuck, he’s too tired for this. ‘Sascha, where’s this come from? I told you I want to be here, I want you to be happy-’

‘Which is it?’ Sascha asks and he does have an inflection now, faintly, the sardonic edge of bitterness that colours his press after a loss. ‘You want to be here because this is what you want, or you only want to be here because you think that’s how to make me happy?’

Mischa stares at the defensive wall of his brother’s shoulders and remembers Sascha, saying _I know I pushed you._ His own reply, _I wasn’t sure but I am now_ , how that might’ve sounded to someone feeling guilty for kissing their own brother first, getting caught on camera because they flirted too much, too publicly. Almost ruining both their lives with something that Sascha’s apparently still under the impression was all his idea.

‘Sash,’ he says. It comes out compressed tight by guilt; he’d assumed Sascha knew now, that he’d made himself clear earlier. He’s thought it loudly enough, enough times in dark hotel rooms, to half-believe it’s already an accepted truth between them but why would it, when in three years he’d never _said?_ ‘You didn’t push me into this.’

Sascha half-turns his head, although he doesn’t look up. His mouth is pulled into a defensive half-smirk, all bitter. ‘I remember it pretty clearly Mish and there was literal pushing. By me, of you, up against the wall.’

‘It was a door actually, I remember too.’ Teetering on the precipice of honesty, Mischa looks at the unhappy curl of Sascha’s entire body – and lets himself fall.

‘I remember how relieved I was,’ he says in a rush, words bleached thin by being held back so long and he sees Sascha’s head lift a little more. Listening. ‘I remember months of waking up from dreams of fucking you, so hard I couldn’t not jerk off and how ashamed I was after. Thinking there was something wrong with me.’

Forcing his cramped hand to let go of the doorframe, he paces over to the bed only to hesitate with one knee on the mattress; Sascha still isn’t looking at him, making the words stumble out easier against his blush. ‘I- I remember catching myself watching you,’ he says, ‘when you walked out the shower when you were seventeen, only wearing a towel and trying to see over your glasses because they’d steamed up, water running everywhere. I remember the way my chest hurt for a second because I couldn’t breathe, because I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and then I remembered you were my brother and I didn’t have that right.’

Finally, _finally_ , Sascha looks around. His eyes are huge in his pale face, shadowed in exhaustion; when he speaks, his voice dips uneven.

‘But you always had that right. I wanted you to touch me before I even knew why.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ Mischa swallows against the remembered ache of those long, lonely months when his entire body lit up whenever Sascha walked into the room, how angry he’d been with himself, and how ashamed. ‘All I knew was that I wanted you desperately no matter how I tried to distract myself and then one day you kissed me and asked me to fuck you and all I could think after was, _what if I did something to make you believe this was what you wanted_ . Which of my rules did I break – I had a whole list you know, in my head; don’t look you, don’t touch you unless you touched me first, don’t jerk off where you ever might hear me. I _tried_.’ The words dip with remembered anguish and he lets himself sink down on the bed, rucked sheets sticky beneath his knees, and closes his eyes against Sascha’s bright stare. ‘I don’t know how I fucked you up Sash but none of this is your fault, I wanted this before you kissed me. Long before.’

He keeps his eyes shut through the silence that follows, dragged out in the wake of his confession. He’s carried the guilt for three years, ever since the instant Sascha’s lips parted from his for the first time and the heady, glorious rush of _we can have this, it’s okay_ twisted into _what the fuck did I do._ He’s had no one to tell other than Sascha, and he’d been too afraid of this specific silence, trembling around them, as Sascha thinks it over. What he might say.

What he does say quietly, is, ‘You did do something,’ and for an instant Mischa knows what drowning feels like.

His voice comes out so strange, it takes him a second to realise he’s spoken. ‘What?’

Sascha blows out a sudden breath and it’s unexpectedly exasperated. ‘You stopped touching me, you idiot.’

‘I-’ Mischa blinks his eyes open; Sascha’s looking at him with both eyebrows raised, wearing his patented ironic little smirk as if he’s trying not to laugh which is- oddly reassuring. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Touching me. Looking at me. _Talking_ to me, rather than some empty space over my shoulder for months. Not in any way that made me think you wanted to fuck me through the bed but just at _all_ , Mish. We were finally moving in together, we’d been excited about it for years and you barely strung out a sentence the whole time we were looking at apartments.’ He tilts his chin down, the bright focus of his eyes turned rueful through his lashes. ‘I thought it was my fault. I thought I’d done something awful to upset you.’

‘You thought – after I tried so hard to pretend I wasn’t thinking about-’ Mischa groans, rubs a hand over his face until white stars spark behind his eyelids. ‘So why did you kiss me if you thought I was mad?’

‘Because I wanted to. I had for ages.’ Sascha hitches one naked shoulder, casually dismissing the earth-shattering decision to kiss his own brother as a whim. ‘It seemed the perfect opportunity. If you were mad at me anyway, I’d rather it be for something I knew about and if you were already mad, I couldn’t make it worse you know?’

‘So you just thought, _I guess I’ll kiss him._ But what if I hadn’t wanted it? I could’ve gone running to Mum and Dad.’ Mischa runs a helpless hand through his hair, pulls it hard for the grounding sharpness. ‘ _Fuck_. I could’ve punched you.’

Meeting his wild gaze, Sascha smiles small and steady, and so, so sure. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I wouldn’t ever,’ Mischa admits, crack of helpless honesty to it. ‘Remember? I fall, you fall-’

‘We fall,’ Sascha says softly, all the tension abruptly relaxing out of his shoulders and Mischa has to be touching him _now_ , as imperative as breathing and he crawls awkward over the tangled sheets to curl a hand around the scruff of Sascha’s neck, mouths coming together with Sascha’s relieved sigh and the ease of no secrets left to hide.

By the time they part they’re out of breath and there’s a weird floating lightness in Mischa’s chest where he hadn’t known the guilt weighed quite so heavy. There was nothing either of them could’ve done; he tried to pull back and Sascha followed, as inevitable as the sunrise. No matter what they both ended up here, Sascha’s lips on his, inescapable. He leans his forehead against Sascha’s and lets out a laugh on a huff of air.

‘We’re both idiots. We could’ve told each other this up against that door three years ago and instead we pretended everything was fine.’

‘We pretended to protect each other,’ Sascha corrects him. He slides a hand up into Mischa’s hair, holds him still while he steals another wet-mouthed kiss. ‘Not that that worked so well in the end.'

Pulling back slightly, Mischa starts to frown at him before he follows Sascha’s gaze down, to his lap where crinkled paper and off-true ink stares back at them. 

That’s what Sascha was looking at, he realises, hunched over on the edge of the bed: the photos. He must’ve retrieved them from Mischa’s hoodie pocket and smoothed out the wrinkles, careful, until they’re almost good as new. With his hand surprisingly steady, he reaches out to trace a leftover fold at the corner of his own inked smile.

‘We look happy,’ he says softly. ‘Don’t you think?’

Sascha leans into him, shoulder all warm, bony angles where it presses against Mischa’s chest. Reassuringly familiar. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees and his tone flattens a little. ‘Not that Mum and Dad saw it that way.’

‘It’s not their fault. They’d see it as wrong – as me taking advantage of you. Also, did I mention wrong?’

‘We’re not hurting anyone.’ Sascha’s tone turns obstinate, shades of the fury he’d thrown at Stefanos lurking in the lowlights of the sound. ‘Nothing wrong should make me feel like this, like- like I could move mountains for you. Win Slams for you.’

‘Sash, we can’t tell them the truth,’ Mischa says, as gentle as he can make it over a flicker of nerves because this is what he’d spent three years trying to protect Sascha from, the feeling that they’re trapped in unbearable secrecy and that they’d end up resenting it. ‘They’ll never understand. In fact I’m not sure Dad bought our little double act earlier so we’re going to have to be careful.’

‘We’re always careful; that’s why these photos are so annoying,’ Sascha says, poking the paper with a careless fingertips and Mischa’s about to point out that actually they got caught because they hadn’t been careful at _all_ , when Sascha suddenly tenses again in his arms, leaning back to pin him with a glacial look. ‘Wait. When you say careful, do you mean you’re skipping Paris?’

‘Yeah,’ Mischa admits, and after a beat, ‘maybe London too.’

‘ _Mischa_ -’

‘Sascha. Dad’s going to be watching us like a hawk for the next few weeks; do you really want to have me there as a temptation? I’ll be in the Maldives and we’ll have to be careful enough there too, everyone’s going.’

‘Fuck. I won’t see you for _weeks_.’ Sascha fists his hand, kneading at his thigh in frustration and crumpling the bottom edge of the photos, paper crinkling before Mischa catches his wrist, slides up to fold their fingers together for comfort. ‘It’s not as if you can share my room in Finolhu either, they’d definitely notice.’

‘I know.’ Mischa pauses to think, idly tracing his thumb along the familiar calluses of Sascha’s palm. ‘Hey,’ he says slowly, ‘do you think Olya would run some misdirection for us? Half the press already think you two’re fucking, maybe it’s worth making something of it.’

Sascha snorts. ‘Depends on if her girlfriend agrees. You know what she was like about the _family friend_ headlines.’

Mischa muffles his laugh against the tangle-soft fluff of Sascha’s hair. ‘Yeah, what was that message she sent you? “I have no use for men’s balls-”’

‘-“but I’ll take yours if you get any ideas”,’ Sascha finishes and gives a theatrical shudder. ‘She meant it too. She might be warming up to me though, she told Olya to tell me hello the other day.’ He hesitates. ‘We absolutely cannot tell Olya the truth though; she thinks ‘secret’ is just another word for ‘instagram’. And she thinks I’m sleeping with Marcelo… actually, some days I think _Marcelo_ thinks I’m sleeping with Marcelo and it’s only that we haven’t got around to taking our clothes off yet.’

‘What a shame you’re taken, hot stuff; sure you aren’t bored, would you rather go have sex with half the tour?’ Mischa deadpans and breaks off with a laugh when Sascha tackles him onto his back, thumping to the bed with an _oof_. The photos get crinkled somewhere beneath them as Sascha gets his legs over Mischa’s hips, warm weight in all the right places, catching his wrists to press them to the pillow with a deliberate teasing grin. Mischa grins back, easy now with relief and adoration, letting himself be pinned without a fight because it’s what he wants – what he’s always wanted, after all.

‘We could tell Marcelo,’ Sascha says after a thoughtful moment. He’s measured, quirking an eyebrow when Mischa doesn’t immediately nuke the idea. ‘He can keep a secret. If Olya thinks she’s covering for me fucking Marcelo, and the rest of the world thinks I’m actually fucking Olya-’

‘Then we end up with a whole lot of dominos to fall if we screw up.’ Mischa sighs.’I don’t know Sash, this is fucked up. What if Marcelo thinks I’m taking advantage of you and has me arrested?’

‘He wouldn’t, I love you and he likes me too much,’ Sascha says with supreme – and possibly not unfounded, given what Mischa knows of the Brazilian’s idolisation of Sascha – confidence. ‘He’ll listen if we explain. Besides, then at least the only other person who knows about us won’t be Stefanos-fucking-Tsitsipas.’

‘Now _that_ is a convincing argument,’ Mischa agrees and groans when Sascha rolls his hips, bare skin on skin and Sascha’s smile lazily beautiful as he looks down, so certain now of Mischa beneath his hands. Certain for the first time that they’re both all in, this everything they both want. Suddenly Mischa wants to tell Marcelo; if he can’t shout this from the rooftops then he wants to confess to someone, give voice to the truth of Sascha in him, kissing him, to make it real beyond closed doors and crumpled stolen photographs, set his feet inescapably on this path and nowhere else.

So much of the last three years he’s spent trying to guess what Sascha needs. He’s realising finally that he’d have been better listening to what Sascha actually _wants_.

‘If you think he can keep a secret, we’ll tell Marcelo,’ he agrees, watching Sascha focus on him with a slow-dawning grin, all dimples and flash of teeth. ‘We’ll work it out. Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Sascha says, lit up with his grin, all gleaming excitement and he leans down to kiss his approval into Mischa’s mouth. ‘I love you. Even though you made me kiss you up against a door to make you listen.’

‘Feel free to adopt that approach anytime,’ Mischa murmurs into the kiss. ‘After all, it worked out pretty well the last time.’

‘ _Eventually_.’

‘What can I say?’ Mischa says, and laughs, feeling Sascha’s smile mirrored against his. ‘I like to make it worth your while.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Olya in this: I'm mostly -_- facing at her and Sascha's respective instagrams for whatever comedy skit they thought they were pulling in the Maldives this year but I just liked the idea of Olya having a girlfriend and ran with it.


End file.
